This Saturday, a giant fell. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead at a resort in West Texas. In a better world, folks would come from across the aisle to mourn the loss of a respected political figure. After all, we in the Beltway may not agree on everything, but after the gavels are set down for the day, those little letters at the end of our names, our political affiliations, our possible illicit donations from Georgian lobbyists, they all melt away. When we’re toasting beers, we’re friends first, colleagues second, and our ideologies come last.

Unfortunately, this world died long ago. When I looked at my Twitter timeline, it was filled with rancorous partisans referring to a Justice of the Supreme Court who was personally appointed by the President of the United States as a “piss hog.” Some of my friends on the extreme left were celebrating his death. Don’t get me wrong: it’s alright to disagree on things on principle. For instance, some of us think the airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz last year didn’t go far enough, while some of us thought it was adequate. Some of us think that welfare recipients’ children should be outfitted with tracking tags, and some of us just want to drug test their parents. But I’d like to think none of my friends would ever stoop so low as to politicize the death of a public servant.

In order to educate my younger readers on the ideal of respecting their ideological opponents, I’ve compiled my favorite opinions penned by the notoriously witty Scalia. You and I may not agree with all of his opinions, but hopefully a look at his trademark snark and pithy writing will open your eyes to why he was respected by people who know better than you:

Jamrock vs. United States, 1990 (5-4 vote, deemed it unconstitutional for federal prisons to bury mentally disabled inmates up to their necks in sand for punishment)

This Scalia dissent is a classic:

“Though the nattering naysayers of the ivory towers may declare it cruel and unusual to make a sand castle out of convicted criminals who, despite their sub 75 IQs, disobeyed the laws of the land, make no mistake that this decision is part of a conscious path the courts, academia, and media are taking. That path is one where the hip hop-addled family destroyers that roam our streets seeking white women to defile know they will not be reprimanded by the strong state the framers of the Constitution had in mind. Criminals will likely bash their heads into walls to render themselves ‘disabled’ so they can enjoy plush stays in federal facilities, never answering for their destruction of American families.”

The State of MIssissippi vs. Durham, 2002, (7-2 vote, deemed it unconstitutional for the state to make phone calls pretending to be the aborted fetus of women who received abortions)

We all remember this one. Scalia must have caused a few of the jokesters at the Capitol Steps to feel lucky he took up jurisprudence instead of comedy writing!

“The obliteration of the American family starts in the wombs of women whose minds are warped by the libertine propaganda funneled into their brains by the Hollywood filth machine. There, they are told that their potential children are just speed bumps on their highway of consequence-free intercourse, drug use, and premarital cohabiting. To forbid state officials from being moral vanguards due to increasing federal power that seeks to undermine traditional values, the noose is being tied around the neck of our spiritual core. So be it, allow unwed mothers to decapitate their infants while en route to rock concerts where they indulge in needle drugs and perform sexual acts that shame their parents. This is the nation the filth mongering scum want.”

Chevron vs. Gumlake Township of Alabama, 2004 (5-4, permitted petroleum companies to dump refining byproduct into drinking reservoirs of small towns if they have lower than “B-” credit ratings)

This one shows me why millennials were so quick to denigrate the late Justice Scalia; he was just plain snarkier than they’ll ever be!

“As a dead document, the Constitution does not afford protections off of special emotional considerations for small townships just because of overwrought news reports about their ‘undrinkable water’ and ‘rising birth defects.’ Simply put, if poor credit ratings cannot be punished, why would they even have been invented by God? If for-profit firms cannot exercise the most efficient disposal techniques for their byproducts, would that not have been written into the original Bill of Rights? The water in Gumlake may or may not kill any living thing that wanders into it, except for the crocodiles and their tears that make up the pitiful arguments the court heard today.”

“Probable cause is an ironclad term that has evolved over time. Once it referred to the smell of bathtub gin. Before that, it denoted the dress of cattle thieves who were brought to their deserved hangings. In the modern context, pants that droop below the anus are synonymous with crime glorifying rap music and the moral defilement of white teenage girls. Police officers take this account, so to prohibit their counterparts on the bench to ignore this is to conducts a horse race in which both the jockeys and the mares must wear blinders.”

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Carl “The Dig” Diggler has covered national politics for 30 years, and is the author of “Think-ocracy: The Rise Of The Brainy Congressman”. Got a question for the Dig? E-mail him at carl@cafe.com or Tweet to @carl_diggler.